Years from now, NBA fans will reminisce about the 2019-20 Houston Rockets for their unique “small-ball” system. This height mismatch would ultimately be the downfall of the Rockets, whose aspirations hinged on winning an NBA championship. What went wrong?
Whether you’re a die-hard football fan or a casual bystander, each year, the world stops for 90 minutes to watch the biggest game in club football — El Clásico Español, a game between Spanish juggernauts Real Madrid and FC Barcelona. Only this year, Barcelona’s Nou Camp stadium wasn’t rocking. The teams’ 99,000 fans had to chant from home.
Irving and Neymar are similar in their diva personalities. They want all eyes on them and feed on the adulation of carrying their teams to victory. Their dribbling skills and flashy play draw crowds and their diminutive frames allow their agile, quick bodies to drift past opposing players with ease. But their lack of definitive success, mixed with their tendencies to showboat and reject teammates, make them luxury players who end up hurting their teams more than they help.
Muscle shrinkage takes three weeks to start taking effect, which could also affect the conditioning of players. Players who have been training for years can lose significant muscle mass in only a few months of quarantine.
For the casual viewer, watching grown men kick a ball into a net and earn millions of dollars is just another game. But for the die-hard fan, it’s life. And to be held in soccer purgatory until further notice is mindnumbing torture, solitary confinement — an isolation that might be the bitter pill to swallow that will get the soccer world out of this pandemic.
Millions of kids aspire to become the next Cristiano Ronaldo, but while their dreams take years of training to materialize, one “pop” of their knee is all it takes to end to their careers. According to the National Library of…